YOU COULD understand Graeme McDowell shaking his head at the vagaries of the golfing gods. After all, he’d spent all year meticulously planning his schedule and working hard on his game; and, then, an unscheduled and unscripted appearance in a non-official tournament – the Chevron World Challenge – at the tail-end of the season enabled him to tick so many boxes.

In finishing second to Jim Furyk at Sherwood Country Club on Sunday, McDowell put a gloss on his season: he rose from 55th to 38th in the official world rankings, thus securing an place in the field at all of next year’s majors, and he moved from 28th to 12th in the European Ryder Cup world points listings for the match with the United States in Celtic Manor next September. Amazing, really, what one week’s unanticipated work could salvage from a year’s endeavours.

This week, McDowell will round off the season when partnering Boo Weekley in the Shark Shootout in Florida, but – in truth – the 30-year-old Ulsterman’s mind is probably looking ahead to the 2010 season with renewed confidence. For a player who practices neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and is an advocate of the power of self-belief, the past fortnight’s play in the post-season (second with Rory McIlroy in the World Cup and runner-up to Furyk in the Chevron) will enable him to kick forward in the New Year.

“This year has been a funny year for me. I just feel like I started to play good the last few months and I was running out of tournaments, really. The boost up the world rankings (after the Chevron) is obviously just huge for me . . . it’s been a frustrating year. I got nothing out of all the work I put in and, in a funny way, this kind of puts a shine on it and gives me a little something back for all my hard work this year,” said McDowell.

Indeed, McDowell – who earned his ticket back to Augusta National for next April’s US Masters thanks to leaping back into the world’s top-50 before the year’s end – had purposely avoided doing the mathematical calculations. “I didn’t want to put myself under any pressure (going into the last round). I was playing nothing-to-lose golf,” he explained.

McDowell had three top-20 finishes in the majors this season (tied-17th at the Masters, tied-18th at the US Open and tied-10th at the US PGA) but, generally, felt that he had under-delivered. “I became very technical during the season, (and) I’ve never been a technical golfer. I was starting to know a little bit too much about positions and what the club’s doing and why, blah, blah . . . I was becoming too knowledgeable about my own swing and sometimes knowledge can be a disadvantage.

“So I really just tried to quiet my mind down a little bit and get back to playing golf and the ball started to behave itself. I started to get feel back into my game.” McDowell, who only earned a place in the field after receiving a late call-up to stand in for the indisposed Tiger Woods, certainly made the most of his opportunity. And, if a first win this year eventually eluded him, his performance will certainly add an extra spring to his step as he heads into a winter’s break before reappearing for the Gulf Swing in mid-January (taking in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai) as he sets about retaining his place on Europe’s Ryder Cup team.

More importantly, perhaps, McDowell can go about returning to tournament play in just over six weeks time knowing that the pressure of trying to return to the world’s top-50 has been achieved ahead of schedule.

For Pádraig Harrington, his third placed finish in the Chevron completed his season’s work and he won’t be back on tour for another eight weeks when the focus of the early part of his season will see him based on the US Tour with a return to the West Coast for tournaments including the Los Angeles Open and the Pebble Beach pro-am.

Harrington, in looking back on the past season which was winless on tour, remarked: “It was a disappointing season in terms of results but a very positive season in terms of the benefits. I’m happy going forward. That’s it. It’s probably a good year to put behind me, too.”

Despite his failure to win on tour all year, the Dubliner has nevertheless remained at number five in the latest world rankings while Rory McIlroy – who was forced to withdraw from the Nedbank Challenge in South Africa over the weekend with a virus – has dropped one place to 11th.